American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with James Brewer Stewart, part 3 of 5

Well, no, but it really was not abolished it all showed up in Basically debt-penage that turned into the prison systems and then you get books that show you how prisoners Encages are traded across state lines as enslaved laborers There's a couple big books on that right now once being made into a film actually it is a film So you can go with this stuff. It's scary Okay, I got to get serious again. Wait a minute. I'm all I'm all Lucie Goosey now got to tighten up. Okay Garrison advocated disunion because he believed that the Constitution was approved. Oh, yes. Okay fine Garrison advocated disunion and by that He met two things The first thing that he met was his own spiritual disattachment From American citizenship as conventionally understood

Remember the masthead of the liberator said my country is the world and my country men are all mankind The idea that somehow he belongs to a higher order of citizenship That is what God's obvious design is all about the idea of personally separating from a sinful political system That supports slavery every time you vote He had that as his first idea the second idea was The idea of making the point that by not voting you're registering to everybody else Exactly what peril they're taking in trafficking Through the ballot box with the slaveholder Northern disunion is in a one hand a state of mind And on the other hand, it's a political statement He had to back him up one of the great legal theoreticians and constitutional Scholars of his day when to Phillips

But a lot of grief from Harvard and wrote a couple of big compelling Documents that made the argument that slavery was all throughout the Constitution And therefore was a covenant with death an agreement with hell to use Garrison's language And that all morally upright and sanctified global citizens should withdraw from its spiritually And condemn people who vote and go to the ballot box so Phillips and Garrison have this big position about Northern disunion The constitutional argument is with other abolitionists who are involved in the political process Who have created big books that say the Constitution is an anti-slavery document And the argument there is one that eventually Frederick Douglass adopts The problem with disunion from the standpoint of African-American abolitionists is that it disenfranchises them And their demand is that they be treated like

equal American citizens And to go to the polls is a sign of citizenship And the idea of boycotting is to do pride for yourself of the right To be able to assert your claim as a full political figure So it's a very complicated process But it's one that doesn't simply involve Garrison separating from the union personally But it's part of a big dynamic about what the Constitution is really all about What politics is really supposed to be for Can slavery be abolished politically or not? Is moral revolution still possible? All of those questions get aggregated around this constitutional question of what the union's about And it's complicated even further by people Who are Southern jurists, Southern slave-holding jurists, who make their own arguments about the Constitution John C. Calhoun is probably the most famous Putting together notions of minority rights and states' rights Which are basically protections for slave-holders Remember I just care about banging the...

Oh, I'm sorry, I get so cool It's been involved in this thing I don't get captive audiences, Rihanna Now, don't be forward to 1847 Actually, before we get back to this union, was the Garrison see it as a practical program or a political device? It's a polemical device, but it's also a moral imperative Yeah, it's a polemical device absolutely, but it's a personal moral imperative for him For him, and he would say this, if you were to ask Garrison Is voting a sin, and he would say sin for me And the reason he would say that is because Underneath all these positions that he's taking is his commitment to the idea of freedom of conscience The idea that there is a broad platform for abolitionism

Where you might not believe all the same things that I believe But we can still collaborate as brothers and sisters In their crusade against slavery So long as you don't take an exclusive position that makes me violate my conscience I mentioned Wendell Phillips a little bit ago Garrison's closest collaborator and greatest friend Wendell Phillips has nothing whatever to do with nonviolence Wendell Phillips is somebody who is a tremendous orator And who all the time is talking about bloodshed who's talking about rebellion Who's talking about the idea of people reclaiming their citizenship by force of arms if necessary Garrison the pacifist and Phillips the platform warrior Can stand together in a program that involves freedom of conscience So long as they don't exclude each other's opinions The problem as far as Garrison was concerned with the people in politics is they were insisting that abolitionist vote

And that was an exclusive kind of claim That forced other people to take positions that violated their own personal convictions Now how do Garrison feel about the emerging pre-slobable? Ambivalent Let me start again because now that I know what the question is, I want to pray a little bit into it in a way that I didn't know when you first asked it Garrison responded to the free soil movement in a way that really was difficult for him I should explain a little bit what the free soil movement was During the time that we're talking about now from the mid-1840s onward on into the 1850s The dominating issue in American politics Was whether or not the institution of slavery would be allowed to expand further and further and further into the continent

Along with the rest of the kind of settlement that Westward expansion was creating The United States sent a land speed record for occupying space and time and killing Indians and moving people out of the way To create a Political system that after the Louisiana purchase lands were all Turned into states and then we moved on to annex Texas get california get Oregon and Fight the Mexican war by the time we're done with that of course. We have Nevada you talk honorado all kinds of different places And so we do have the continent Under our control Slaveholders demand that their private property be allowed to travel with them as new territories are explored the same where you'd carry your piano or A suit of clothes or anything else and the objections of people in the north were to the whole idea of the expansion of slavery into areas that were seen as places Reserved for free labor homesteaders

Now this debate is the debate that Abraham Lincoln entered in his Long Back and forth with steven a Douglas In the Lincoln Douglas debates in 1858 this is the issue that began to take the two political parties and unravel them So that as garrison begins to hear this debate about free soil and the expansion of slavery He also was watching the American political system come under stress that it had never seen before And he was listening to anti slavery politicians starting to say things very much like the kinds of things that he would say Using a great deal of abolitionist language in congress Not associating it with garrison But picking up the vocabulary that abolitionists had been inserting into political discourse For better than a decade and a half So garrison was able to listen to people like William Seward And that is stevens and Joshua R. Giddings

And other salmon chase Benjamin Wade these are all northern politicians who have anti-slavery backgrounds And who are deeply dedicated to the idea of free soil The question that garrison has to ask himself is is this progress It does this mean that we are finally moving ahead Well, no because all these guys got to where they were Where they were positioned in the political order through the corrupted process of voting and electioneering They all went to congress and they swore in a bible to uphold the constitution I think the constitution is a covenant with death and agreement with hell, but I really like these guys And a lot of abolitionists begin to have this ambivalent feeling about this new development of Sectional feeling and sexual expression coming out of the free states That seems in a variety of different ways to reprise some abolitionist vocabulary

But never says anything about immediate emancipation And often talks a great deal about the rights of white people Demigrate while at the same time making clear that there's a very deep racist strata In a lot of the objections that northerners have to the expansion of slavery So it's a very difficult question Beginning with the free soil party in the election of 1848 all the way on into the opening of the civil war For abolitionists to come to terms with this transformation of American politics and the collapse of the second party system Now this is this is happening around the time you know you mentioned there They're western tour together in 1848 And the disagreements that were emerging between them How would you just characterize in a larger sense the difference in their their to approach The difference is an approach between garrison and Douglas

That turns out to be very Clear cut once it's established Douglas begins to realize That from his point of view The only way to create emancipation is by exercising the levers of power Douglas in a deep and fundamental way becomes a politician comes to an understanding that One has to begin to engage directly in political discourse with politicians And begin to involve themselves in election area in order to be able to influence this process Of debating about slavery in Congress And colliding with southerners about the future of slavery in western territories in such a way that the argument begins to be deepened And become more an abolitionist argument Douglas's choice when the first time comes around in 1848 to actually vote for a

Legitimate big third party the free soil party in 1848 the nominated a real-life politician named Martin Van Buren who had been president of the United States at one time To run again as president of the United States on the free soil ticket Douglas said we're gonna vote for this guy. We're gonna campaign for this guy. I understand he's a racist I understand that he doesn't stand exactly for what we stand for in fact He stands as a tremendous aberration of much of what we believe in But unless you can mobilize black voting power and an abolitionist voice within the political system By arguing that the Constitution is really in its deepest form an anti-slavery document And warrants this kind of involvement if we can't do that we can't make progress Doug garrison on the other hand continues to insist That the Constitution is a pro-slavery document that politics is all corrupt that politicians in congress represent What's one of his favorite?

Statements a cage of unclean birds And so garrison and Douglas finally have absolutely opposing visions of What the duty of abolitionists should be in the face of the emerging section Crisis over slavery Yes I think that Douglas in a number of different ways Begins to embrace politics out of desperation Out of a sense that one way or another there's no exit From the constant triumph of slavery across the country. I think you have everybody has to remember That from the 1830s to the 1860s all these abolitionists who are taking 30-year careers To dedicate themselves to this cause see the size of slavery double From two million to four million people and the territories that it commands

More than double and double again The fact of the matter is that in pure demographic and geographic terms slavery Is becoming more and more powerful they feel in American life And so the original expectation going way back to the 1830s of immediate conversion Has now seem to be a protracted struggle against something that has become a real slave power And Douglas's turn to politics is to get a sense of agency to get a sense of hope I think To find a way to be able to feel yourself involved with something really really real I'm not sure about pragmatism. I think much more it's a sense of being driven to have to hope in this Than it is to be pragmatic And I wonder if you would do the same kind of We'll look of course at this beach of Premihan

It's same kind of Garrison's frustration at this point with him back. Yes, I mean Garrison's frustration with the free soil movement And this ambivalence that he has about the politicians who sort of sound like him But don't really sound like him Push him in a direction from time to time where his disunionism becomes even more manifestly exhibited The famous event where he burns a copy of the Constitution And asks the people to say Amen At the end of it is a really flamboyant gesture Towards a position that he's been taking for over a decade. There's nothing different in it But the theatrics of it is exactly that sense of frustration I mean if you read carefully abolitionist speeches This is not Garrison. Garrison is not a particularly good order

Garrison is a tremendous Polymesist Garrison's language is so rich in print That it's almost impossible to believe that he could rip this stuff off as quickly and as beautifully as he did But Wendell Phillips was the order And Phillips would say in abolitionist meetings in the 1850s We've been doing this for a tremendously long time We don't have any money any longer We come to the same meetings every year and we rehearse the same principles over and over again Applying them simply to the newest terrible thing that's happened as slavery expands westward And you get this sense of really being beleaguered And a feeling somehow that all of abolitionism has hit this blind Sp- this this dead end this blind alley and It's at that point that The rise of the Republican Party begins to destabilize the Garrison inside of the conversation People who have stuck with him for years and years and years suddenly start talking about how they need to vote

And other people who are close to Garrison but even much closer to Wendell Phillips begin thinking Is it necessary to start thinking about the whole idea of insurrection? And the beginnings of violence A lot of the terrible events that happened in the west over the contest over slavery that involved John Brown and Kansas Fan all that But the commitment to pacifism and nonviolence begins to destabilize the commitment to non-voting begins to destabilize Not so much in Garrison's mind although some He hails the coming of the free soil party he said if we if we only could vote we give them all our ballots But we can't vote You know you can just feel it there and he felt the same way very much about the Republican Party so what really The question is is how pertinent after

Almost 30 years of doing this as the union begins to unravel Is the abolitionist message and that's what all of the abolitionists are struggling on either side of the constitutional question To try to understand and to try and further at a time of tremendous crisis Let's go back into a couple of little No You mentioned before the deteriorating relationship between dares and Douglas Well, there were a lot of things going on by 1853 by that time Douglas was in In Rochester He was publishing his newspaper and he was living with his white assistant and she was German immigrant

And it was clear that they were involved in a relationship and there was plenty of dirt to dig So the whole question of Douglas's personal life The question of Douglas's political views the idea that he's put together a newspaper that looks like a competitor to the liberator Because garrison's newspaper was always his newspaper was never the official Spokesperson for the American anti-slavery society freedom of conscience said I get to edit my own newspaper And I don't represent any organization Douglas's newspaper was very much his own newspaper But at the same time it got all involved in anti-slavery politics So the competition between the two of them was an important point in all this and so By the mid 1850s the relationships with between them have become Very very still to and Douglas has pulled together an entirely new friendship group involving Garrett Smith and other people in upstate New York

Garrett Smith being a millionaire abolitionist who Very happily was happy was able to subvent Douglas's newspaper Um, and we don't need to cover the whole anti-burns thing, but I wonder if you would just describe the atmosphere in Boston when we got out The Anthony Burns rescue attempt in 1854 Is a moment in Boston history Unlike any other before the Civil War we need to back up For Boston abolitionists slight garrison The city of Boston itself was an experiment in race relations It was an experiment in race relations that began with abolitionists demanding in the late 1830s that the state legislature Which meets right in Boston right by the common repeal its law against racial intermarriage It moves from that to big struggles that go on through the 1840s and 50s to desegregate schools Which is finally done all over the state of Massachusetts

desegregated public transportation lack abolitionists and white abolitionists going into the colored only sections of public bus carriages and um and fairies waterways desegregating all kinds of things the idea that the city itself is a haven for fugitive slaves Begins with vigilance committees that free blacks put together and the whites begin to sponsor as early as the 1830s By 1854 all that history is in place And in 1854 four years after the passage of A bill called the fugitive slave law of 1850 A fugitive is captured in Boston by the name of Anthony Burns And held in the jail by the sheriff Up until this time Abolitionists have always been successful in being able to spring fugitive slaves by one means or another There's a

Case of a guy named Thomas Sims that comes earlier than that. I don't want to get into all that history So Anthony Burns is in jail and the city of Boston is occupied by federal militia President of the United States takes the US Army and sends it to Boston To make sure that this slave never escapes a huge chain is cordoned around the Boston jail And armed guards and pickets are all everywhere A group of abolitionists in not garrison garrison's not involved in this but all the garrisons buddies are involved And Wendell Phillips who was someone I know great deal about was very heavily involved in it began to figure out how to rescue Anthony Burns under these conditions and Decide to charge the The jail and forcibly liberate Anthony Burns At which point there's violence There's casualties and Anthony Burns is not

Released the event fails Anthony Burns then is marched in chains down the main street of Boston For everybody to see surrounded by troops as he goes to the wharf to get on the ship to send him to New Orleans The entire city is decorated in morning Black banners everywhere people half out of windows booing and hissing and singing and making these enormous demonstrations And the whole idea of the event was to show that federal power Overcame local objections in the heartland of radical abolitionism To what slavery really meant in American life. It's tremendous tablo Of what the sectional conflict was really all about the end of the story Which a lot of people don't know

Is that first of all there was an attempt to try and liberate Anthony Burns once he got on the ship That didn't work. He actually did go back to slavery The next thing that happened was that everybody who is in the abolitionist community who was tracking this kept track of where he was And began to figure out how to get him out of there Big debate about whether it's moral to buy a slave to free a slave Or now there was problem Douglas had with his own emancipation actually But it turns out finally that Anthony Burns is liberated ends up at Oberlin College ends up getting his degree you can see his handwriting improve You can see spelling get better in the letters that he's sending back And by the time it's all done Anthony Burns is Exactly what he could have been Had he not been set back to New Orleans in the first place So it's in in in in a fundamental way. It's the abolitionist community at its best

The way this story finally ends up That's all in the Wendell Phillips papers You can see his handwriting improving he really can. It's just really cool Trouble is I know too much. I mean the long story like that. I don't know how you can even use it Well, you know, I don't know for the post script, but I just don't know, but but We already talked about So we get back to Harvestberry Um How is Garrison affected by grounds mark Oh Brown John Brown was undoubtedly the most Electric figure in the entire sexual conflict

The entire debate between north and south over slavery if there's one intervention That matches that turn It would be John Brown Because Underneath the politics of this conflict is the entire problem of Violent liberation of slaves in slave people taking up their own cause And Brown's March into my Harvestberry is Capture his trial His conviction his sentencing Brown's own incredible way of being able to orchestrate his own martyrdom Brown was absolutely genius At working the press At giving interviews Talking to people and turning himself into as fully committed a Christian sacrificial lamb on the altar of slavery

As he could possibly pay In that sense Brown captured the imaginations of just everybody he knew him would One way or another and Garrison is only one person I mean Ralph Waldo Emerson thinks that he's the most wonderful man in the world When they'll fill up Can't get enough of John Brown He gets a hold of a John Brown pike He carries it around He goes up to A companies that John Brown's casket back up to North L But the little farm community where Brown had been saying which was I'm Garrett Smith's property And the market the orchestration of the martyrdom continues the row the same way Always the idea that Brown is somehow the supreme sacrificial figure And at the same time someone who calls up the best of the Puritan past the Oliver Cromwell The guy who de Thrones monarchs and brings right and justice into the world Garrison listens to all this

And keeps having this bell ringing his head about nonviolence And has at the same time this emotive sense of Brown being exactly that kind of charismatic figure And you can see Garrison Wallowing back and forth between not endorsing what John Brown did But endorsing the spirit that moved John Brown to do it If it's the same kind of move that he made with Nat Turner In a way, but in this case the Nat Turner insurrection was something that was very Hard for anybody in the United States To clap hands about and say was a wonderful event John Brown has all of his friends in New England who have been his financial supporters Telling him and Garrison that John Brown is the supreme American hero And so Garrison's own position in this case condemning the violence but celebrating the motive

Means really that by 1859 his flag of nonresistance has got a lot of tatters in it And it's not going to be hard for him a year and a half later To say that he is a firm and devoted supporter of the union after South Carolina succeeds So it's a prelude to the abolitionists joining up as loyal northerners regardless of what their views on the Constitution were before the Civil War As loyal patriots not demanding that the war itself be fought to abolish slavery That he thinks what the law that the boy has been shitting ever so slowly When when is that point and It is After for okay, I have to start

Are we stopping